Phantasmatic Indochina
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NOTES Introduction: Indochina as Fiction lOne of the first coherent attempts at exploring French writings on Indochina was undertaken by Jean Ajalbert in L'Indochine. His anthology, however, which includes works written by a wide variety of French authors, lacks an overarching critical framework. The first and only full-length literary study of Indochina, to my knowl- edge, was written in the 1930s by Louis Malleret in his classic thematic survey, fExotisme indochinois dans la littlrature jranfaise depuis j 860. Shorter studies also worth mentioning include Clive Christie's informative essay, 'The Quiet American and the Ugly American: Western Literary Perspectives on Indo-China in a Decade of Transi- tion 1950-1960." The work on Indochina of a new generation of French scholars must also be consulted. See, in particular, the work of Gilles de Gantes. 2 In the introduction to his translation of de Certeau's fEcriture de l'histoire, Tom Conley points out that the English translation fails to convey the complexity of the French usage (xx). 3 A number of studies have been devoted to this subject. Consult Gervereau; Lewis, Paret, and Pareto 4 Although these examples among many others suggest the complexity of the historical conjuncture of the time, they fail to articulate the intensity of the violent force exerted on the colonized world by the West. For an in-depth discussion of the ravages caused by the colonizing powers, one could point to the seminal work of Edward Said for a model study of the complicit role scientists and scholars played in deploying Western knowledge in the service of colonization. Few studies, however, have been devoted to investigating the ideology of medical discourse and institutions such as the Institut Pasteur de Saigon, as well as probing the complicit role of doctors and pharmacists in the colonization of Indochina (see Bernard; Pluchon). 5 In his memoirs, Andre Thirion writes that he conceived the whole exposition as being in three main parts: Sadoul was put in charge of its proselitizing aspect, where statistics, engravings, and photographs of the history of the French colonial empire, of its conquest, exploitation, and mise en valeur of foreign territories were showcased. The second part, ideological in nature, which Thirion kept for himself, dealt with